


What that followed Andorhal

by halduronbrightwang



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Blood and Gore, Blood and Injury, Canon Compliant, Koltira says gay rights, M/M, Medical Experimentation, Medical Torture, Psychological Torture, Punishment, Quest chains, Rescue Missions, Torture, Undeath, World of Warcraft: Legion Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-17 22:55:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21551113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halduronbrightwang/pseuds/halduronbrightwang
Summary: So many years spent locked away, diplomacy and letters of bargains, deals, and politics gone unhonored to rescue the Knight of the Ebon Blade locked in the Undercity. Koltira Deathweaver held onto the hope he was not forgotten, and that one day again his blade could be sunk into the flesh of those carving his own away. Truly, Thassarian had not abandoned him.Truly he hadn't, had he? For how long must he wait until that day to come when he would be free, and all would know why he had earned the name of Deathweaver.
Relationships: Koltira Deathweaver & Thassarian, Koltira Deathweaver/Thassarian
Kudos: 32





	What that followed Andorhal

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Inksinger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inksinger/gifts).



> Many assumptions made on why exactly Koltira couldn't just pop a death gate and walk out of the Undercity throughout. 
> 
> For the longest time writing this, the file was just called 'Koltira goes to Gay Baby Jail' and honestly I'm still tempted to leave that the title

Being made an example of was no strange experience as a soldier. Any mistake was swiftly punished, the Farstriders had made him no stranger to it but any man worth his sense would have begged for theirs rather than that of the Scourge. The Farstriders were like mewling cats compared to Arthas’s wrath- his own troops tortured and mutilated from the inside out for their failures.

More than once a newly risen death knight had flung themselves from Acherus, plummeting to the earth below in a muted, barely heard splatter of flesh and bone, just to get Arthas out of their mind. At the suggestion to move where they were raised away from the balcony, Thalanor had merely shrugged- they would try anyway, and it gave the ghouls something to do when they were sent down to retrieve the corpse for parts.

Others who had lasted long enough to fail the Lich King personally got worse treatment, used in the center of the necropolis as any passerby’s personal punching bag and toy, restrained only by magic. They could still lash out and attempt to fight, but that was just part of the appeal for most. Many tested their rune blades against these former comrades, tearing their armor like paper and taking so much joy in wringing howls from their throats. As much as the Scourge were made to torment the living, they simply didn't last as long and a toy that got back up and stitched itself together was much more fun. Koltira would often watch with idle interest as his undead brothers would torment whatever sorry sack of rotting meat was put into chains, their cowardice and failure to be long learned lessons if Arthas ever let them out again.

He was no stranger to this. Torture and he had long since become bedfellows- The Scourge had done it, the Scarlet Crusade had tried, only wounding his flesh, and the Amani had long before all of them made torment something Koltira knew quite personally.

So then now, being locked beneath the Undercity, it should have been nothing new, but yet it was. He was no stranger to fear or pain, but he howled with it as the chain round his neck dragged him through a portal and straight into a cage. Realizing the winch and cage bars lined with anti-magic runes, had been prepared ahead of time, and not merely thrown together haphazardly brought the first true dread Koltira had felt in years. He awaited for the portal to open once more and Sylvanas to step through, as gracefully as she would when she was still alive, but it didn't come.

Rationality told him that was part of it, as the winch pulled the chain back into the wall after he removed it with deep blackened bruises on his flesh already. It was her game, one he'd seen many times before. She would wait, and let him flinch and jump at every noise for hours, maybe even days, just to watch him squirm as he anticipated the real torment to begin. 

Koltira knew this game well, and knew Sylvanas liked to bide her time. Her plans, when going well, could play out over weeks or months rather than hours and days before even truly being set into motion. Part of his mind snided that she would quite enjoy chess. Maybe as a parting gift after she was done toying with him. He knew he was too valuable just to be killed, a former general of the man she hated most, he'd seen far worse than the theatrics shed put on in front of his own soldiers and while he did fear what was to happen next, he wasn't quaking in his boots either.

In the meantime, he fiddled with his cage. Testing it, shaking it, looking for any sign of weakness. The anti-magic runes were too deep in the metal for him to scuff or rip off, filled in with another metal to not introduce weakness to its bars. The irons were all too thick to bend or break, even with hoisting himself up by his elbows on a crossbar and kicking it full force with both legs. Hell, he couldn't even get entertainment by attempting to roll it, bolts as wide as his finger set deep in the stone. Boredom, it seemed, was the true torture for now. The death knight had no way of knowing how much time was passing beyond the rhythmic drips of slime down the walls. His mind sought anything to do, anything at all. He'd counted the tiles on the floor ten times now. The wall’s bricks similarly. Perhaps Sylvanas had already forgotten about him, tossed in a cage and left like a forgotten toy, or perhaps the battle for Andorhal wasn't truly won as he'd thought.

Thassarian had already surprised him with the farmers, it wasn't too much of a stretch for his retreat to have been a decoy for a larger assault. The Alliance wouldn't have liked that much, but it was little matter if true. Victory was victory either way.

Thinking over whatever had taken so long for the Dark Lady to make her appearance got set aside with the clack of armored boots against stone growing closer. Sylvanas and her entourage of blight maddened dread guards had finally made their appearance as he stood uncomfortably in the cage, a little too tall to be at his full height. He mocked a bow as best he could with the limited area, barely even getting a reaction.

“Save your groveling, Koltira. The time to fix you of your weakness has come.” Her voice was like a glacier- it could crash and deafen, but also was hollow. Unmoving. 

“Andorhal was won, was it not?”

“Your actions nearly cost us that victory. You had multiple opportunities to end the battle and take the city for the Forsaken. Troops, dying without reason, and for what? Because you cannot be spurred to harm a former friend?” Her hand came crashing down into the side of the cage, rattling it. He didn't flinch, instead casting his eyes down. “You, you fight for the Forsaken, and you will do so in the interests of the Forsaken and the Forsaken only.”

“Yes, Dark Lady.”

Sylvanas’s sneer just about turned into a snarl as he addressed her. When she was angry, she became untethered and out of control. He'd seen it before, her recklessness, much like that statement. Whomever her lackeys of the day were, they must have been the most loyal, for they didn't even react at her demand that implied whatever the rest of the Horde thought, it didn't matter. That was what made her the most dangerous, and his predicament. The rest of the Horde may not of even known he was down here, nor the Ebon blade.

It was no stretch of the mind to think that the forces he’d been made an example of in front of were executed or facing similar treatment at this moment. Sylvanas wasn’t a fool and wouldn’t simply let them walk free to rattle off all that had happened to any passerby- if they weren’t killed or in irons, buying them out at the very least was what happened.

Still, as the dread guards reacted to a command he didn’t bother to hear, Koltira held some small hope that Thassarian would come for him. The Ebon Blade, despite much of their ranks rejoining their peoples, held bonds together stronger than that of their former lives. Returning to Acherus at any time to meet with their brothers in death, etch fresh marks into their runeblades, and train was no rare thing. 

Any Death Knight going missing for any stretch of time was not unnoticed.

It was what came afterward that made anxiety bubble in his mind as a dreadguard carelessly ripped his pauldron off his shoulder through the bars of the cage. He for but a moment threw his elbow to let the saronite scratch against the metal in a horrific screeching noise for the pure annoyance it caused, but no more than that. Even back in the days of the Scourge, recovering one’s allies were not even a scratch on a priority list, and that hadn’t changed much now. Despite Thassarian defying those customs to leave him for dead the last he’d been taken captive, the only time retrieval had ever been an official order was if the Death Knight in question had something of value that lead to their second death in the first place, and retrieving that the only priority. Not even burial awaited those who failed, and he could only hope Thassarian was bold enough to defy the customs of the Scourge- No, the Ebon Blade, his mind corrected, once more and rally others to do so if he wanted to keep in one piece at the end of this. 

He was without most of his armor soon enough, the undead around him swiftly removing it from the bottom of the cage without even opening the door so he couldn’t use any of it as a makeshift weapon. Byfrost had been rendered useless by the cage’s magic, not that he even had enough room to swing it and was the first thing removed when he was dragged out by his shoulders. The faintest pain echoed in his joints at being tugged around like a doll and thrown onto a stretcher. For now, he didn’t fight it. Not with Sylvanas watching and perched on the edge of a bloody table like a snide cat, looking for any sign of weakness as her men restrained him. Hands and ankles were bound twice over, once with leathers, the second irons clamped deep into the blood soaked wood. For now at least, he could bide his time. Let them think he had submitted to his fate and wait for an opening.

“Make no mistake, the death knights are stronger than you know. Arthas made sure of that, at least in the physical sense at least.” Sylvanas reminded her men, circling around him like a vulture and taking his prone position in. If the man wasn’t sure it would earn at least a pound of flesh carved out of him he’d of rolled his eyes. Mocking, insults, and psychological harm during this was not to be unexpected. The Scarlets had done it, with jabs about how he went against the light, how much he was damned to suffer when they finally returned him to death, that his body would be naught but broken fragments and no grave. The Amani did so as well, jeers about how sweet elven flesh was and the joy that would be taken in carving him to pieces when he was still living.

That hadn’t shaken him then, neither would Sylvanas’ threats now. 

Testing his binds he flexed his arm, but they didn’t bend as his captors poured over an array of tools set before them. All were rusted and caked in dried gore and various other fluids, likely to not have been washed in years. A distant yowl alerted him that he was far from the only person down here, but that was something of an open secret. Those who did know did little to care about Alliance prisoners who’d gone ‘missing’ over the years, or the black market of flesh and limbs for Forsaken’s sources. Who was he to think he’d be special and the only one to face torment down here?

A sharp pain brought him back out of his thoughts. His eyes flicked to the side flaring with ache immediately, finding a rusted scalpel being run across his ribs and more tearing his skin than cutting it in the hands of a dreadguard lacking a jaw. Koltira’s lips curled into a disgusted sneer as the undead drooled, fat globs of it dripping across the plane of his stomach and into the wound. It was nothing unbearable so far, as he had his flesh folded over and innards exposed to the damp air. 

“I have other more important matters to attend to, such as cleaning up the mess he’s made. By the time I return I expect our champion to be made quite familiar with this room.” Not that he could see it, but he could hear Sylvanas depart with a bored tone in her voice. The guard working on pulling his intestines out like streamers gave a curt nod as he hung them from a rack while another prepared some sort of injection. He’d been far more concerned with why his innards needed to be set aside until it felt like pure molten lead was running up his spine and for the first time he screamed in agony since his capture. Frantic thrashing did nothing to relieve the pain or move his body away from it, his nerves burning like singed rope. This pain he knew- something consecrated and holy, blessed by the Light. Flesh felt as though it did when he was alive for a time, feeling the rot, decay, and wounds of years in undeath before fading into a smolder. 

It was as though his joints and connections were full of rabid dogs with molten teeth, set on tearing their way out of his bones. Breaths drawn instinctively burned and his mouth tasted of ash, copper, and mold. When he calmed enough to look down at what had been done to him he cursed, the syringe was firmly in his gut, plunger pressed down but traces of a clear liquid remained. 

Holy water, it had to of been holy water. That would explain the thick gloves the undead was wearing and how she held the vial far from her body as he thrashed about in fury. His bindings gave no budge or weakness, the stretcher only groaning slightly against its bolts as the jawless one tightened his limbs to keep him still.

“Enough, we’ve got much more in mind for you.”

Koltira spat, dark brown ichor spraying and landing mostly across his own chest. His reaction to the pain was the instinct to carve and gut these undead, Byfrost ringing in his mind to taste their flesh on her sickened blade. Being unable to do so caused his ire and bloodlust to grow as they continued their ministrations. More holy water injected at random until his throat grew raw from his howls, and flesh carved away to reveal more interesting places to put it. Anyone living would have been long dead by now, that he knew, from blood loss or shock. 

Curses of the wildest hells flew in his mind to the Lich King for making his champions so resilient, as holy symbols and runes got carved under his skin where they burned and blackened his already dead flesh. 

A particularly hard thrash against the irons earned his limbs being stretched and pulled so hard he felt his left shoulder pop out of the socket and pull on his muscles hard enough for something to tear. A tendon probably, in death he was hardly as flexible as he had been in life. His fury was a roar in his ears, blocking out whatever taunts and jabs the pair of undead threw his way and inbetween bouts of torture allowed him to think of creative ways to return the favor. Part of his mind remembered the pit in Acherus, and all the torments laid upon those death knights deemed useless.

Yes, quite a few would heavily come in handy, should he get his hands on his runeblade or out of the anti-magic zones preventing his casts long enough to release his fury. His muscles were tense like coiled springs and he had no outlet to release it, the most damning frustration of it all. 

He could take the pain easily, his broken body could be easily fixed. These bouts of torture, threatening to make him lose his mind, and the isolation when finally he was tossed back into the cage, bloody, flayed, trapped like a rabid animal, that could be his undoing. He barely registered that he was shoved in with a broken metal pole pole to keep from flailing his dislocated arm like a club at the undead’s face or that he snapped his teeth like a dog. 

Fury pumped in his veins even if his blood, mostly on the floor, did not. Koltira Deathweaver was gone for several hours while a rabid husk remained, content to smash against the bars, snarl and wheeze, and pace as much as he could. Any time his torturers came near he flared up again just as maddened as before until finally they left and the furthest part of his mind, the part still him, got to watch his foolish aggression.

Several of his fingers were broken now, from slamming them at the metal cage and carelessly shoving them through. His wrist for sure, on his limp arm, shattered. He was aware of how much pain his body was in, but for now at least, didn't feel it. At least for a time he could rest until he regained control of his own actions and it came back.

It was slow at first, and already lessening from necromantic magics holding him on this plane stitching himself back together. As soon as he was able, he used his good arm to hold the flaps of his stomach back together again, allowing them to heal mostly back into place. It was good enough, eventually a neurosurgeon could put him back together properly. To aid the process he rammed his damaged shoulder into the bars so it could pop back into socket and quickly it was renewed, whatever torn muscles and tendons stitching back into place and returning feeling to his fingers. Needles still in his flesh and tips of knives oozed out in black ichor, painfully, but not as bad as consecrated blades. 

Above all his injuries, slowly healing of their own accord, the most painful was his bloodlust that remained. The powerful need to return every blow tenfold, to feel bones break under his hands and blood pool. For screams to be the most delightful music in his ears. That wouldn't fade so easily. It wouldn't go away.

He was not driven by it as badly as most of his other fellows in the Ebon Blade, he didn't wring such joy from suffering as Orbaz, Silystra, or the others who had happily razed towns and villages to dust during the Scourge invasions and prolonged the suffering of their every victim, but it was still a need. Like how any mortal suffered without food or drink, he'd suffer without taking out his fury. Mentally he could be but a husk permanently, it was how the Lich King kept his forces under control.

Do his horrible acts, or lose your last, clinging bits of your mind. 

What a crock of shit this situation was, Koltira mused, laying against the cool bars. He'd rather die again than deal with that, but that was the point of it all. Make him suffer, so the next time he'd be kept in line.

He had no idea how long it had been, just drumming his fingers in time with slime dripping down the walls. Counting the time, at least a day since his last torture session. They were getting longer in between, sometimes he'd be left there on whatever torture rack had been chosen for a day, maybe two, to stir in his anger. Today he taught a valuable lesson, that he wasn't above the use of his teeth, when one got too close in threatening to rip off his nose with a pair of rusty pliers. That small amount of pain in biting off a couple of boney fingers he'd inflicted was enough to get him by for now but it grew stronger. More evident he'd have to do something unspeakable soon or begin to go insane.

At least the Forsaken kept things interesting and he could distract himself in counting the different ways they tormented him and come up with a few of his own he could return.

Today's round he was put in irons, the chains thick and heavy enough to make him sag under the weight as they were strapped to his neck and wrists, but not his legs. That was odd, at least, until he was led to a room longer than it was wide, and the other end of the chains put through a massive iron loop in the floor, tied and locked tightly enough he had to bend down to get any slack in them. Still, despite the many torture sessions, he made little effort to fight back or attempt to escape- When the time would come, he would know it and everyone who stood in his way would be known as to why Koltira had been such a valuable asset to the Scourge in those days, and why he had earned the name of Deathweaver. It was simply best to save his energy for then, and do what he could to keep in as much of one piece as he could muster for when he was ready.

He had no way of reaching the walls from here, or the other prisoner left with him as the room’s heavy iron gate was slammed shut. There were several windows fitted with bars, each having a guard just tall enough to see through them, armed and ready. Again memories of the pit flooded back and he had an inkling as to what was going to happen.

The other prisoner was a human priest, a sickly looking thing but eyes full of fire, more intent on glaring him down than any of the guards. Her clothing much like what remained of his, reduced to rags, and once a deep red.

Of course- a fucking Scarlet. She shouted profanities in common he didn't care to take the effort to understand, giving his own chains a tug as the women pulled at the ball fitted to her ankle. Koltira could feel his ire grow by the second- the only living thing in this city larger than a rat left defenseless, weaponless, and hobbled, practically on a silver platter just for him to sake his bloodlust upon yet just so frustratingly out of reach. 

He gave his chains another tug. One loop was cracked, and if he could break it, could move at least another couple of feet. The death knight gave no indication he knew of its flaw even as part of him didn't trust that it was there. Sylvanas was too smart, too cunning, too methodical to let something as simple as a broken chain slip past her. It had to be intentional, he thought, giving another tug and felt the crack grow, it's sound masked under the others rattling together. Koltira didn’t know if this was meant to be some sort of deathmatch fight, or merely an act to drive his bloodlust into a powerful roar and then deny him of it again, but it mattered little. He had to sate himself. He had to get some measure of control over his mind again so that he could plan and think clearly, more than just the rabid need to escape and let his fury out. 

Most of all, when the Ebon Blade inevitably came for him, for he still clung to the idea that Thassarian would not abandon him to rot, he needed to be whole enough that he would not be put down in the thought he’d completely lost himself and was no more sane than a ghoul.

The captured scarlet screamed and her shrieking wail was punctuated by a rock or piece of the floor being tossed his way, missing, but the act enough to get his attention. He hated the scarlets, their misguided views of the light and how all must be purged, long, rattling rants on how much the Knights were damned and all undead with them. His previous torture at their hands bubbling forward in his mind only added fuel to the fire. 

Koltira let out an irritated hiss at her, mocking her insults that she was trapped in with a rabid animal and took satisfaction from her flinch, his lips curling into a snarl. If only he’d had his armor the image of him with ears pinned back, bloody teeth and hate in his eyes would be befitting of a rabid lynx. Instead he imagined that he looked much more like an emaciated dog.

Something in him seemed to click, and he felt his strength grow. Whatever wards were about the room, the same ones that were around the torture chambers and surgical slabs he’d grown familiar with, snapped. Broke. He could cast again and feel his runic power surge back to life. 

Evidently, as the scarlet’s eyes widened and she raised her hands in a casting position she’d felt it as well, and molten fire burned his skin and dead flesh singed at the contact with her smite. Being chained down made dodging all but impossible, the best he could do was thrash from one side to the next and avoid getting hit dead on, instead sacrificing hits to his legs and arms rather than chest and face.

A particularly hard pull to the side snapped his weakened chain and finally he was able to get the slack needed to pull even harder. The chain swung and Koltira grabbed it in his bloody, bound hands, raising it above his head and brought it back down again. Humans were slow, too slow to react to such a sudden movement or process it enough to understand. The thick end of the chain came down like a whip but unlike any he’d ever seen, shattered the bone in the scarlet’s leg, sending her to the ground. 

Luckily, she fell forward, and more than close enough to be beat to death with his improvised weapon. The first blood he’d drawn in far too long the feeling surged in him as the guards came pouring in to get him back under control and before the magic wards were put back up Koltira managed to cast off a few spells as he was wrestled to the ground- He renewed his strength draining the dead blood of one guard as they crumpled, blasted howling ice and shards of hail about to tear the flesh as his own was renewed. 

It didn’t last long, unfortunately, as his head got slammed into the moldy and damp stone tiles of the floor and an oddly shaped pole pressed at the back of his neck, threatening to severe it if he struggled too much. His insults in Thalassian came upon deaf ears and he was back in that damned cage soon enough, just as bloody as he’d started.

Another torture session didn’t come until long after his bloodlust had drawn again into a dull ache. Again and again each was marked with being left to stir, to stew and ferment in it and he would be no better than an animal, snapping his teeth and foaming with blood and spittle as he was wrestled back under control

Enough filth, his own carved away flesh, dried blood, and fluids had begun to accumulate in the bottom of the cage his legs and feet were constantly muddy and itching, caked in gore. He couldn’t sit down without standing back up again with large, rusted red streaks of gore coating his body or spores of mold clinging to his skin. The only good thing about it, he mused, was the growing collection of needles, blade tips, and scalpels that had been carelessly left in his body were perfectly hidden in the mess and indistinguishable from the rest of the filth. One scalpel that previously had been digging into his hip was beginning to look much more like a lockpick as he ground the blade against the bars of his cage and should have been long enough that when he finally filed it to be thin enough, could reach into the largest of the cage’s locks. 

Perhaps when the guards changed he’d try again to pick it so that when his next ‘appointment’ with the plague doctors he could give them quite a surprise. The door already unlocked he’d lunge out and tear the flesh from their rotting bones before they had the chance to put him in irons again.

Or maybe not. His ears twitched, picking up the sound of someone approaching. Guards on either side of the hall saluted a small, emaciated woman in her approach, carrying a tray with an array of bottles. Some poisons, one clearly the newest strain of blight they’d taken to testing on his flesh as of late, others he couldn’t make out clearly from their brown bottles. Quickly he stashed the makeshift pick and shuffled uncomfortably. What would it be this time? More harsh injections, or force feeding him the concoctions just to see what they would do? The forsaken woman’s hood tilted as she approached, her golden eyes crinkling with a smile.

Koltira searched her face and found recognition in it- This wasn’t one of the many, many undead he’d come to recognize as his tormentors but a friend and an ally. She nodded as she knelt just out of reach from the cage under the guise of settling her bottles and tonics that had shifted in her walk over to him and just low enough for him to hear the language of death was a great comfort to hear.

“Finding you was a great trouble, Koltira.” 

When one of the guards turned his head to look at them, he kicked at the edge of the cage and gave off a snarl, as if trying to inch away from her. It didn’t take long for the guards to go back to ignoring him and he could speak, just above a whisper.

“You wouldn’t believe how glad I am to see one of our cultists. How long has it been?”

“Since Andorhal?” The woman poured one of the tonics over her bony hands and began preparing a syringe, tapping its glass to remove air bubbles. “About a year and a half, perhaps two.”

Over a year. Over a year he’d been trapped under here, but also a year he managed to keep his mind intact. At least he could savor that.

“What took so long?” His words were barely punctuated by the pain of the needle in his neck, and from it he could feel his muscles twitch with renewed vigor. A healing potion of some kind, he mused, that had to be snuck in with whatever horrid things filled the other vials she carried before her.

“The Dark Lady denies all knowledge of your disappearance. Her soldiers and anyone else who were at the battle do the same. Quite a few false leads as well, the Dark Lady is tricky like that.”

Not that he needed to be told that, he had his suspicions that there would be false information circulating as to what happened to him. Who knew of how many rumors had circulated by now, making finding him all the more difficult as those who didn’t fully know spread them. Like a game of telephone, twisted and warped the information and made digging through it all so much more difficult when the Knights finally had the resources to do so.

He could imagine Thassarian going through it all like a fine toothed comb through sand, for any piece of something useful. Sorting facts from the falsivites and gossip. Attempts to piece everything together, how he’d last been seen at his post in Andorhal for sure, and that he’d never left the basement of the inn in a conventional sense. Being dragged through a portal, one never would have seen him exit if they were not in the room, it could have added days before someone realized he was gone if they had assumed he merely was in his small, rented room to rest after the fighting had finally quelled. To make it all worse was that his capture had clearly been planned for some time before it occurred, and most, perhaps all the forces he commanded at Andorhal, had been planted by Sylvanas and were unlikely to spill any inkling of her plan to a single soul. How much trouble had the Ebon Blade gone through just to sniff out for sure that he’d been captured and not killed, and then how much more to finally, after what surely had felt like longer than a mere two years as the cultist implied, to find where he was being held?

“I cannot be here long, and don’t expect to have another visit any time soon. You know if we are caught, that I’ll likely be in a cage just as you are and it will do you no good for getting you out.” Koltira nodded at her words, a tiredness beginning to grow in his bones. Did she add some sort of sedative to the potion? Either way, as his limbs sagged and grew heavier, the feeling was a comfort. His bloodlust was fading with it, a temporary measure for sure, but it was more time, more time until it came back. 

“I must go back to Acherus now. I’ll be sure to give the Highlord your regards.”

“Tell Darion I am as alive as I can be, and my regards to Thassarian. Give them the reminder that Byfrost likes the taste of Scourge just as well as the living if they forget about me.” 

In truth to her words, the death knight didn’t see hide nor tail of the cultist again for some time. Usually, when he did recognize a face outside of the torturers, it was just a glimpse from across the canals, or in the crowds that would sometimes gather to watch him be tormented as if it were a medical theatre. Some were soldiers he’d served with prior, others cultists who had infiltrated the Undercity, under the guise of regular citizens doing a peon’s work. Never did they approach him, unless directed by those who flayed his flesh and tore at his body intent on breaking it. 

It was frustrating that allies were so close, yet so far, and he had no way of communicating with them. No way of telling them to hurry up and get him out of this dull and dreary place. The only way he had any way of knowing how the passage of time was going was the occasional glimpse of holidays passing the managed to slip this far into the city. A rotting Hallow’s End jackolantern, being dumped into a canal carelessly, the sound of Winterveil bells distantly, that noxious and nauseating smell of perfumes and colognes from the Alchemy quarter all too familiar around late winter and as it all cycled back again.

Someone arguing, too loudly, for the trick or treaters to shoo and begone, for the festival ended a week ago. 

Sometimes he would smell holiday foods and although he didn’t need to eat not crave the sensation, Koltira desperately craved to taste anything but the ash and mold in his mouth. He imagined the familiar taste of spearmint candies, rather than whatever fungus had taken residence in his throat.

If he’d thought that Winterveil jingles were annoying before, the sound of a custodial worker cleaning the next room and singing one for nearly an hour straight at a time, and out of tune, was maddening for the three days it took to mop up his blood from the walls.

The heat of summer as inescapable even underground, which made the air hot, humid, and damp. His wounds didn’t close fully for weeks, festing and oozing constantly as moisture clung in the air of the subterranean city. 

For several weeks now he’d grown more and more exhausted, the most movement he had under his own accord either thrashing wildly on a slab or attempts to pace in the cage. His patience was almost non-existent at this point, and put an end to the Ebon Cultists checking up on him to see if he was still there when he snapped, shouting at one and rattling the bars of the cage loudly.

Koltira spent most of his time, when not being tortured, trying to keep his mind occupied. He counted things, imagined the acts of rearranging them, trying to remember where they had been yesterday, the day before that, a month ago. One such tally in his mind how long a fallen hammer would go unnoticed beneath the torture bed before someone found it and finally returned it to it’s place.

Sixteen days thirty-eight minutes, he remembered. 

At one point he had drew his boredom away, using a sharpened piece of glass to etch marks in his own skin at the boundaries of where his runic tattoos had once been. Many sessions of having his flesh flayed and carved away, holy and shadow symbols carved into the muscle just below it, had ruined them. Only the barest of shining, shimmering, arcane blue had remained, botched, fragmented, and broken from the rest where only ugly scars or smooth newly healed flesh remained. Not all of those tattoos had been Scourge in origin. Some had been there, long before he’d met his fall at Thassarian’s blade.

A shame they were gone now, the artist who’d done them surely dead with the invasion of Quel’thalas and hardly worth raising again. At least with shard of glass held between his bloodied fingers, he could mark out where they could be put back into his flesh again when finally he was released. 

Long ago, Koltira lost the hope that his capture was meant to be a temporary punishment from Sylvanas. It became all too obvious that she fully intended to have him like this until the very stones of the Undercity were worn away and the earth reclaimed the city. Maybe by then, he’d still be down here, still be in this cage. Trapped, beaten, and forgotten.

She hadn’t made an appearance in what he assumed to be months. Whatever kept her busy or away, the death knight was glad for it. The last he’d seen her was met with the brutal magics she could control, trying to enforce will over him, to ‘free’ him of his weakness she saw. The desperate act of trying to cling to his own mind and remain solidly so himself was worse than any torture that had come before it, and it hadn’t happened only once. Occasionally the Val’kyr were involved, occasionally they were not. When it became clear the magics that had raised him to the Lich King- Arthas’- control so long ago were stronger than any at her arsenal, that tract had been abandoned and much of the time he was simply left to rot.

The only thing keeping him sane was knowing that surely, The Ebon Blade knew where he was and had to be working through their efforts to set him free, no matter how slow the process was, and sateing his bloodlust by striking out at his captors and crushing any putrid fly or rat that got too close to his cage. 

Koltira tried to shove down the thought of the time he actually ate one of the rats that had gotten too close and was too easily made flattened under his hands. 

A horrid racket awoken him from the unconsciousness he’d learned to bring himself to at will. His eyes tightened as a scowl grew, thinking the noise to be the sound of someone dragging over their newest torture device to be tested for the first time. It wasn’t until he’d heard the familiar grunt of an abomination throwing its hook and a sickly splatter of rot on the stone that his interest was fully captured and he stood, wasted hands gripping the bars of his cage as he attempted to view around the wall to see what was happening.

Was it another Alliance incursion, a desperate bid to end the Banshee’s unlife? Those had happened more than once. Perhaps, if they had a Death Knight in their midst, he could bargain for his release. Perhaps the usual routes the soldiers took had been closed off since the last attempt, and that was why it was so close to him this time.

There was a drag of metal across stone, a horrible screech that pained his tattered ears to hear, and a weight lessened over what he’d call his soul if the damned had them. A ward was broken, somewhere. And then there was a voice.

The hollowness of a Death Knight, an older man though not out his prime at death. Accented slightly, from a region Koltira knew long ago, the voice he had been all too familiar with. 

Thassarian.

A ghoul’s warbling call echoed in the pipes. Koltira had long since discovered that ones left over from the Scourge were amongst the Forsaken’s many test subjects in his captivity. Apparently now too, Thassarian was aware of this, as his voice echoed too. 

“I should have known.” It was all he could make out over the sound of fighting. Blades against flesh, armor scraping against hits and blows.

Vigor and determination he’d not had since he was first thrown in here, Koltira bashed his body against the cage, but it's warding was still as strong as it had been then too. Despite doing it again and again, he’d have to wait until the marks on it were destroyed, and he was let out for good. 

Another ward was scratched or broken away nearby.

More abominations sounded, their chains rattling and gurgling breaths so close, Koltira could practically taste their putrid bile. Now he could hear the specific spells being cast, the bloodworms chittering, the distinct sound of a runeblade absorbing and thrumming with runic power. 

“This way, quickly!” There was a second voice, a grunt of affirmation after Thassarian’s order. More than one of his comrades were here, their voice too also familiar. As footfalls fell on the wooden boards Koltira was able to pinpoint exactly where his Ebon Knights were and knew rescue was close. The wooden sound, it was the small bridges in the Apothecarium, not too far above him. The next room they’d cross into the torture chamber for sure, floors still wet with his blood where Doctor Martin had been readying something to be tried on him. 

It wasn’t with great remorse that the elf listened to the strangled groan of the man and his pet die, the only inkling of it that he didn’t get to do so himself.

Thassarian and the champion with him came into view soon enough. They rounded the corner and the man’s steps faltered for but a moment, as if he was startled to see Koltira actually being there.

His champion did no such thing, instead her runeblade raking noisily at a ward as if annoyed by its presence and simply batting away a fly. Thassarian resumed a measured gait, strong, with clear intent as he approached the cage but yet Koltira remained quiet and unmoving.

This could all still be a trick. Another cruel twist of the knife by the Banshee Queen. Not more than a few dozen times had his ‘rescue’ been a false, enamored illusion of shadowy magics playing at his mind, all twisting to some cruel end.

That Thassarian would find him, and walk away. Cruel words would be said, or markings of hatred laid upon his skin by his ally while still he remained trapped in the cage and once more abandoned. Some times, it was Darion or other well known soldiers of Acherus, but as Thassarian was the entire cause of Sylvanas’ ire with him, he was a frequent player in the theatrical false rescues, conjured just to damage him. Koltira waited for whatever mind control or spell to fade and truth be revealed for seconds that felt like years in themselves. 

Thassarian’s voice, with a warmth only found in him despite the chill of death, told him that it was true.

**Author's Note:**

> The Deathlord for this fic is one of my OCs, Silystra Wyrmtalon. More of her will be seen in the second half.


End file.
